Why Solar Panels Are a Good Addition to Your Home
As extreme weather events become more common, there is a growing movement to become more environmentally sustainable. Common strategies for achieving this include:
- Investing in electric vehicles (as opposed to gas-guzzling automobiles)
- Switching incandescent lightbulbs with LED and CFL alternatives
- Reducing, reusing and recycling the physical items we buy at the store
All of these are solid strategies for shrinking your carbon footprint. However, one of the most effective ways to reduce your environmental impact is to install solar photovoltaic (PV) panels on your home. As you’ll soon see, improved sustainability isn’t the only positive that emerges when you go solar.
Benefit 1: Environmental Savings
Most utility providers generate the bulk of their electricity by burning fossil fuel inputs such as coal, natural gas and oil. Unfortunately, doing so releases greenhouse gases such as CO2 into the atmosphere — leading to worsening air quality and a rapidly changing climate.
By contrast, solar panels don’t pollute once installed on your home. Instead, they silently convert free sunshine into clean electricity to power your appliances. These carbon offsets emerge on day one (regardless of how many panels you add), and they continue to accumulate over the 25+ years of your solar panels’ warrantied lifetimes.
Benefit 2: Financial Savings
Because installing PV panels can help reduce your reliance on grid electricity, going solar allows you to save money on your monthly utility bills. The more panels you add, the higher those monthly savings become.
This explains why Illinois-based Route 66 Solar advises its residential customers to treat the PV systems they install as investments instead of as traditional expenses. While it costs money upfront to install solar panels, a typical residential system can pay for itself in under 10 years. In fact, solar power has already reached grid parity in many utility markets — meaning that installing panels is cheaper than continued reliance on the traditional electricity grid.
Benefit 3: Energy Independence
With the right type of inverter, your solar installation can continue delivering daytime power — even if the rest of the utility grid goes down during a storm or other extreme weather event. With the addition of on-site solar batteries, you also benefit from continuous nighttime power — whether the grid is down or not.
If you live in a market with frequent outages, installing solar panels could help make you more resilient and energy independent.
Benefit 4: Increased Property Value
Studies have shown that adding solar panels can help increase the resale value of your home. This is because future buyers understand the environmental and financial benefits that await once they assume control of your PV installation. Solar-enabled homes also spend less time on the market for the same reason.
However, these benefits don’t emerge automatically.
Solar-powered property increases are most common when the homeowner finances their PV installation using cash or loans. Both approaches turn solar into an asset that you own (and can “sell”) whenever the next occupant buys your home.
If you decide to lease your panels, you’re technically renting the system. Thus, there’s less guarantee that the next buyer will be willing or able to take over the remaining portion of your solar leasing agreement.
Are Solar PV Panels Right For You?
The monthly utility bill savings that solar power delivers are the primary reason homeowners (and businesses) continue investing in the technology. However, the ability to reduce your carbon footprint, become energy independent and increase the property value of your home are all increasingly popular driving forces behind the technology’s growing popularity.
That solar has never been more affordable only provides additional incentive to begin requesting free property inspections from qualified installers in your neighborhood.
Sources:
https://www.thisoldhouse.com/solar-alternative-energy/reviews/do-solar-panels-increase-home-value
https://massachusetts.revolusun.com/blog/tips-for-buying-selling-homes-with-solar-panels/
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